Only 45 Days...

... til The Festival That Dare Not Speak Its Name.

Overkill on Wal-Mart's switch of "Christmas"  "christmas" to winter "Holiday" in too-many-anthrolopology-classes commerce-speak (let me just 'splain this, you lame ignorant hegemonic bigoted customer, you..., signed, Kirby):

“Walmart is a world wide organization and must remain conscious of this.  The majority of the world still has different practices other than ‘christmas’ which is an ancient tradition that has its roots in Siberian shamanism. The colors associated with ‘christmas’ red and white are actually a representation of of the aminita mascera mushroom. Santa is also borrowed from the Caucuses[sic], mistletoe from the Celts, yule log from the Goths, the time from the Visigoth and the tree from the worship of Baal.  It is a wide wide world.”

And this analysis addresses understandable observant Jewish concerns exactly how?

Tidings of God rest ye whatever, buddy. We like the part about the "Siberian shaman," whom it is apparently still OK to venerate. We don't even want to know about his rough approximation of milk and cookies, or exactly what largesse Baal might deposit under the tree for His devotees upon the epiphany of His slouching near at Baalmas. We are eager, on the other hand -- dare we hope to steal a glimpse of black-clad multi-pierced brooding dropout youth as they fell the massive oak to drag to the Great Hall of the feudal lord? And, oooh, oooh, best of all, Euric the Singular Arian Visigoth sporting his new Aisle 13 Christmas christmas wristwatch.

Oh, well, doesn't matter. It's all the same. Don't forget the tinselled chacmool for the Latin market. 

Presumably the revenue will nonetheless be booked in the "December 2005" column, if that doesn't offend anyone international or academic as too Anno Domini, too linear, too "chronos-over-kairos," too white-male-accountant, too intelligent, practical, or reasonable.

Link via Relapsed Catholic's Dumbest PR flack, 2005: we have a winner! Outrage, astonishment, rancor, and graphic-novel-Breughel near-hysteria preponderantly our own.

Update: This promises the best ding-a-ling ring dance since the Guardian's trans-Atlantic voter-education campaign for Clark Co., Ohio. Mark Shea names Kirby the dimestore Dan Brown. Kathy notices the Spleenville advice :

Rather than boycott them, I think we should encourage them to release more such witticisms, perhaps as regular press releases or maybe even in the form of a biweekly newsletter in which they enlighten the lumpish red-state Americans in such things as the Quechua origins of that custom of putting lace doilies on the backs of couches, how the Inuit practice of lacing their mukluks with deer sinew was the forerunner of those little sweaters for dogs, and so on. Besides, my local Walmart started putting their Christmas stuff out before Halloween.

Further Update: Anybody agree it's for times like this that Wal-Mart and other big players need a blog? A blog that's pithy, current, and interesting so that it's in play, people know about it and are poised to look to it for rapid response when the public rises up Out Of Nowhere.

With the usual mob-level-deftness of bureaucratic decisionmaking, though, Just Who Exactly do you predict might be kicked sideways into the Blogging Department in the wake of a little Generic-Holiday dustup ...? A comfort to our soft-hearted commenter concerned about the security of Kirby's immediate professional future.

For anyone obsessed enough to look further, here's a Googled link to a fierce Northern Germanic derived "Seether" standing to settle the Christmas-loving Kirby's hash in short order. Go to it, Kirby! Go to it, bear!

Feared-final Update:
Alas, Kirby has been fired. Kathy Shaidle links us here as evidence that Kirby was the gift that kept on giving. Ave atque vale, Kirby. Merry you-know-what, it's an ill winter wind that blows nobody good. If you're looking to pick up a little coin between postings, we're offering an honorarium for carfare or long distance phone charges, in return for an interview from your side of the story.

Photo courtesy Jim Duncan Multimedia.

Comments

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

Hilarious. But did anyone really need another reason to boycott Walmart?

I wonder what's going to happen to poor Kirby when his supervisors find out about this.

[dilys]

Hail, Richard the Good Hearted! Kirby will receive the gift of feedback-loop education, learning a little about customer interface, I imagine.

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

Dilys, I envy your facile command of modern vocabulary. "Feedback-loop education!" "Customer interface!" I'd have to do research to come up with terms like those.

[dilys]

If you weren't Richard the Good-Hearted, I'd think you were saying I'm so neck-deep in jargon that anyone else would have to make a study of it to equal the linguistic contamination.

But you are Richard the Good-Hearted : )

Incidentally, I think I made up "feedback-loop education."

[dilys]

Regrettably, someone at the IP address 71.102.168.15, calling himself Ted Williams, without his own URL has abused the commons here with a massive sectarian screed, entitled Satan’s Spiritual Objectives. I suggest he get himself a nice free Blogger.com blog, and on his own turf libel as the Whore of Babylon anyone he wants to. As for us, toodle-oo, Ted. It's not in the spirit of the season. Come back when you're feeling a little more like having fun.